What happened
to the church that was established by Christ and His apostles in the First
Century?Many Christians do not know
what happen to that church after the death of the Apostles of Christ.

Did it survivethe cruelty of the persecutions of the
Roman emperors?

What happened to the church before Martin Luther?

Did it vanish during the dark days of
the Middle Ages or it is still around

And if it still exists, did it keep
the same faith and spirituality or did it lose them over the ages?

To answer these questions, and others, I invite
you to join me in a wonderful journey back in time to the origins of
Christianity, and then from there we will pass quickly through the centuries to
discover our Christian roots and follow them to our present time.

First:
What Happened To The Christian Church In The First
five centuries of Christianity?

As all historians
have stated that the Christian Church survived the Roman persecution and
continued to exist afterwards.The
church lived as one church with one faith, one baptism (Eph 4:5), common
dogmas, and very closed rituals throughout the whole
world for about five centuries.There were no denominations or sects in
the Christian church.Churches at that time were named after a few big cities in the world not
because of differences in faith, but merely to make administration of the
churches achievable.

The sad division
between the churches took place in year 451 AD in the Chalcedon Council.In this council,
bishops representing churches from all over the world assembled to discuss
matters related to the person of Christ.At the end of the meeting, a sharp division occurred among these
churches.The Oriental Orthodox
Churches decided on continuing to follow the same
faith as it was delivered from Christ and His disciples, and these churches
continueto do so until today.These churches are the Coptic Orthodox Church
(Egypt), the
Syrian Orthodox Church (Syria),
the Indian Orthodox Church (India),
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church (Ethiopia),
and The Armenian Church (Armenia).
The other churches decided to be in the other camp,
let us refer to them here as the Western Churches.

The Western Churches split again in 1054 AD into
the ‘Roman Catholic Church’ and ‘EasternOrthodoxChurches’
because of many heresies that crept into the Roman Catholic Church.One heresy says that the Holy Spirit proceeds
from the Father and the Son, which contradicts what Christ says that the Holy
Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father’ (John 15:26).Although for some readers this might not mean
a lot, however, the church shouldn’t change the divine faith.The problem is once a church starts giving
its members the permission to change the faith, changes would happen again and
over.Then, another heresy called for
the universal Roman papal supremacy over the whole world started, followed by
other deviations from the original Christian teaching.

The group of the Eastern Orthodox Churches
decided at that time to [hgby1]
detach itself from the Roman Catholic Church.The Eastern Orthodox Churches today include nineteen churches, among
them: The Greek Orthodox Church, The Russian Orthodox Church, and The Romanian
Orthodox Church.

After this schism the
Roman Catholic Church in Europe adopted other heresies and suffered from corruptions. The Catholic Church appeared to forget their
Christian mission and started to have political ambitions.The church wanted authority over the state in
Europe.All these changes happened while the Oriental Orthodox
Churches were isolated from all these events and kept preserving the faith and
dogma as were delivered from the Apostles of our Lord and recorded by the early
fathers of the church.

Second: Why Did The
Reformation Take Place?

In the few centuries preceding the Reformation,
the historians said that the Roman Church in Europe
suffered a severe deviation from the truth in both the ecclesiastical life and
in the dogma.Corruption
crept into the church and the clergy forgot their pastoral
responsibilities.Instead, they looked
after their own personal pleasures.

Starting from the
eleventh century, the history of the Church of Rome is full of persecution,
inquisitions, and heresies.Burning heretics at the stake and using torture were
common methods to deal with the heretics.Here, the word heresy at that time was used
to refer to a false teaching related to the principle of Christian faith or it
could refer to an act the church did not favor, as in the case of William Tyndale, who was strangled and burned in
1536 because he translated the New Testament into English.The word heresy was also used to refer to an
opinion of matters related more to science or philosophy than to Christianity,
as in the case of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642),
who was tried by the Inquisition of Rome and forced to spend the last eight
years of his life under house arrest because of his scientific evidences that
proved the earth revolves around the sun.1

Renaissance in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries revived the value of the classical
Greek and Roman writings, which included, among others, the Bible, and the writings of the early Fathers of the Church.Intellectual people at that time started
reading the Bible and comparing what they read in the Bible and in the writings
Fathers of the Church to the living reality of the Roman Catholic Church and
concluded that ‘Catholicism differed from the
church of the New Testament in doctrine, morals, and administration.’2
Some called for ‘reform in head and member.[hgby2]

One example that shows how corrupted the Catholic
Church was at that time is the story of Jan Hus,
a disciple of John Wyclif.He considered leaving the Catholic Church as an act of
honoring Christ and the gospel.Yes, to that extent the educated people
started refusing the church and its corruption.The Intellectual people refused the moral
corruption in the life of the clergy and the heresies of the church.

Therefore, as soon as Martin
Luther (1483-1546 AD) announced his
disputation on indulgences and nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Roman
Church in Wittenberg, the news spread like wildfire throughout Europe.Later on, this wildfire led to separation from Catholicism into many branches over
the years of what is known today as Protestantism.

People in the
Middle Ages in Europe had a very real dread of the period of punishment in
purgatory and hell, which were graphically portrayed in the
church.Based on the teachings of the
indulgence of the Catholic Church, the Church controlled both
destinations.Unfortunately, facing all the fears of both, the Church offered selling
indulgences, instead of offering Christ as the Savior.These
indulgences were hard to pay by the poor and a source of distress for the
rich.As a result, when Reformation
started, people hurried to join it to get rid of the nightmare of both the
purgatory and hell.

Salvation and grace
were almost forgotten topics in the Catholic Church at that time.Of course, in the middle of the corruption
there were very faithful clergies and laymen who led good Christian lives.But, as usual, most human beings forget the
good and remember the bad, even inflate the bad to make it look worse than the
reality.

In reaction to the church that forgot its own
mission and tried to control the life and destination of everyone using all
methods including physical death, the reformation
movement completely separated itself from the church and denied most of what
belonged to the church.People had had
it with the Catholic Church and they were eager to get rid of all that belonged
to it.Therefore, they put all their efforts, derived by psychological and social
impulses, to refute all what the Roman Catholic Church called for and believed
in, especially those things that were done by the clergy.They refused
priesthood because of the corruption of the clergy and subsequently denied all
work that required a priest.Since the priests administered all the sacraments,
Protestant denominations refused most, if not all, of the sacraments.

So, Protestants
refused the sacraments, the intercession of saints, many rituals, and other
parts of the tradition that were delivered from Christ and His apostles, not
because of biblical, traditional, or historical reasons, but rather because of
inner- psychological, historical, and social reasons.Then, later on they tried to rationalize them
by finding biblical verses that supported their beliefs. In a severe
reaction to the forgotten grace of God in the Roman Catholic Church teachings
and its full concentration on human work, the Protestants based all their
teachings on salvation, grace, and complete refusal of human work.

While these
corruptions and conflicts happened in Europe,
the Christian Oriental Churches in Africa,
Asia, and the Middle East continued to preserve the original teachings and
spirituality of the early church.They
had no relationship with what happened to the Catholic Church during this
period.Moreover, they condemned the heresies of the Roman Catholic Church
and its deviations from the original teachings of the early church.These churches, especially the Coptic
Orthodox Church, felt that they should act as the guardians of faith.Therefore, we find that the Coptic Orthodox
Church takes pride in its adherence to the apostolic teachings as were received
directly from Christ and handed down over the centuries until it reached us
today, without changes or additions.The
Coptic Orthodox Church believes that ‘the faith was once for all delivered by
the saints’ (Jude 1: 2,3), and the Lord along with His
apostles asked the church to observe, reserve, and guard that faith.[1][hgby3]

Third:
Where Is The Church of The New Testament?

Many are eager to
know about what happened to the church of the New Testament and where it is
now.Many
more ask specifically about what happened to the church between the apostolic
age and the Reformation era.

To answer these questions, Let us visit the
landmarks of Christian history:

1.Christ taught His disciples not from a book but He delivered a life and
taught them all that was related to church life.All the disciples had one faith, which they
delivered to all the nations and exhorted them to keep; ‘I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to
contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints’
(Jude 1:4).This epistle was
written around year 68 AD, while the last book of the New Testament was written
at the end of the first century.Therefore, the faith that he was talking about was not written at that
time.The church delivered a verbal
teaching, which is called the Tradition.Therefore, Jude here refers to the verbal teachings, the Tradition.In fact, writing the book of the New
Testament started many decades after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ,
either to answer specific questions or to discuss a topic or to address certain
needs of certain people or to present a summary of Christ’s life, but these
writings never intended to be encyclopedic and to replace the oral
Tradition.However, by the beginning of
the Second Century all the writings of the New Testament were completed, and the
fathers of the church considered them authentic writings inspired by the Holy
Spirit.Therefore, they were collected
to form the Holy Bible, and considered as the church first and most important
reference.While the early church
considered the writings of the New Testament as inspired books, it didn’t drop
off the Tradition.Surely, the Tradition
wouldn’t contradict the New Testament, since it was the source for the writings
of the New Testament.Until today, we still
go back to the early church to find more about its faith, dogma, worship, and
the rest.Thanks to God, there are
plenty of these writings which support the oral Tradition that are still handed
down in great carefulness and sincerity from one generation to the next in the
Orthodox churches.

2.The church lived as a guardian of the one faith and common dogma until
the schism in year 451 A.D.During this
period if a new teaching would appeared, representatives from all the churches
would meet to discuss the new teaching and either accept it or reject it.For example, when the Arian Controversy
appeared, which denied the divinity of Christ, 318 bishops from all churches in
the world met in the Nicene Council in 325 A.D. and rejected the Arian
teaching.All Christians in the entire
world at this period had the same faith.A Christian couldgo to any
other church and hadcommunion there without any restrictions.There were no theological differences between
the churches.The church was one
apostolic catholic church.Apostolic refers to its establishment by the
apostles of the Lord, and catholic refers to its universality.

3.The sad schism of the church took place in the Chalcedon Council (451
AD) over the issue of the nature of Christ.Contemporary studies show that the discussions in this council were
misleading as a result of misunderstanding and miscommunications among the
churches.One group was using Greek
theological idioms while others were using Latin expressions, and because of
the two languages and other reasons the schism took place.The result of this schism was division of
the church into two camps; the Oriental Orthodox Churches and what I call it
here for the purpose of this study the Western Churches.

4.The Western Churches split in 1054 AD to the ‘Roman Catholic Church’
and ‘EasternOrthodoxChurches’ because of many heresies
that crept into the Roman Catholic Church.[hgby4]

5.After centuries of deviation from the original teachings and
corruptions, the ‘Roman Catholic Church’ in the sixteenth century suffered
another severe schism by the ‘Reformation, ‘ starting in
1517 A.D.

6.In 1529 the Church of England was separated from the Roman Catholic
Church.

7.The reformation was the basis for all the Protestant churches.In 1720 A.D.
the Protestants began what they
called 'Evangelical Renewal.'From that time on, many Protestant churches
are known as an Evangelical.Therefore
sometime both words Evangelical and Protestant are used interchangeably.The number of Protestant churches today close
to twenty thousands denominations and sects.Mostly, these churches follow their own leader(s) in what they believe
and worship.The leaders tried hard to
understand the Bible and its teachings, using commentaries of the Reformation
fathers, who had declined all church sacraments and other teachings and rituals
based on their sad experience with the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages in Europe.The result is a total loss of the spiritual
treasures that the church lived by since the days of Christ.The lost of links to the apostolic church
left the Protestant churches with missing many componentsof the faith that was delivered by the
saints.Moreover, they are lacking the
great channels of Christian spirituality that were eliminated by the
reformation because of historical circumstances, such as the Divine Liturgy and
other rituals.

The faith delivered by the saints is
a whole package that needs to be kept together in contact.You can’t choose and pick what you like and
drop what you dislike.The faith delivered
by the saints does not include theology only but ways of life too, because you
can’t separate faith from life.In my
opinion, the delivered faith looks like a complete recipe.If you change a part of the recipe, it is no
longer the same recipe; you lost it.

With about 20, 000 Protestant
churches existing today, you see all kinds of beliefs.Leaving it up to the individual freedom to
choose, open rooms to individual guessing and conclusions without having a
guide reference.As
one Evangelical leader put it: “After a careful reading in the Bible during the
last two years, I discovered that what I used to teach people, telling them
that this is what the Lord teaches, was the exact opposite of God’s teachings.”

The reformation opened the door to
individual Bible interpretation and to dogmatic changes.Once a church allowed one change to the
faith, sooner one change would lead to another, until the faith is no longer
the same and the divine teaching suffers.This exactly what happened in the Reformation movement when they decided
to do with what was delivered from the early church, thinking that having the
Bible would protect the faith, and forgot that even the devil can use the Bible
to deceive people, as he did with Christ after He fasted for forty days in the
wilderness.

Today we have 20,000 evangelical
(Protestant) sects, each proclaims that it follows the Bible and it knows the
truth, while in fact we ended up in 20,000 different theologies.It doesn’t need a genius to discover that
they are not talking about the same truth, but 20,000 ones or even thousands ones.Also, the proclaim of following the Bible
teaching is misleading, for how could they follow the same Bible teaching and
end up with thousands of different teachings.

The truth was delivered 2000 years
ago and had a standard reference to consult.However, to eliminate the divine we received from the apostles, started
a new dogma, and eliminated the standard reference, as the Reformation did, it destroyed the essence of the faith and crippled the
spiritual life.You can’t work as a
judge because you read the laws only.You must know how individual laws were interpreted and applied.Also, you can’t prepare a doctorate
dissertation in a science without understanding all the general laws, theories,
and history of that branch of science you are dealing with.Similarly, to understand the Bible and
interpret it correctly, a leader needs to get familiar with the divine teaching
that was delivered by the saints, life of the early church, and all the
treasures the church entrusted with for 2000 years.If this is hard to do, I suggest examining
the early church during its first 400 years before schism, when the church in
the whole world had the same faith and dogma, and use that as a standard
reference in interpreting the Bible.

I think by now you agree with me in
that proclaiming following the Bible is not a guarantee of having the right
faith, but using the right interpretation of the Bible is the guarantee, and
there is no right interpretation for the Bible without going back to the
delivered faith and the standard reference of the first church.

8.The ‘Oriental Orthodox Church’ never split or had any deviation from
the original faith.It did not accept
any changes to the faith or any heresies.So, it kept the sacraments and great spirituality methods delivered by
our Lord through His apostles.Therefore, these churches represent a true icon of the church
established by the Lord and His apostles..[hgby5]

HistoryChurch Diagram:

EvangelicalProtestants

Eastern Orthodox

Reformation

c1054 ADd1517 AD

Roman Catholic

Western
Churches

ab

33 A.D.451 A.D.Oriental Orthodox Churches (Coptic,
Syrian, Ethiopian,

Day ofChalcedonArmenian Orthodox Churches) continued with PentecostResurrectionCouncilfaith
as in 33 A.D.

Review the diagram of the Church History, you see a
horizontal line depicts the one church that started, in point a in the diagram, in 33 A.D. with
Day of Pentecost, and continued as one church until point b in the diagram, in 451
A.D.Then you notice the place where the
first schism happened in the church in 451 A.D. at the Chalcedon Council.From this point you see the original line
continues that refers to the continuations of the Oriental Churches with the
same faith, and another line that derived from the original line which depicts
the Western Churches.

Following the line depicted the Western Churches, you will see the second division happened at point
c in the diagram, in
1054 A.D.Now, please pay attention to
the two lines drawn out of the line that depicts the Western Churches; one line
depicts the ‘EasternOrthodoxChurches, and another points to the
Roman Catholic Church.

Now, please review the point d in the diagram, in 1517 A.D.
where the Reformation branched out from the Roman Catholic Church.Later on many churches branched out from the
Reformation, as depicted by many branches with the name ‘Evangelical
Protestants.’

When you carefully examine the drawing,
you will find that the Coptic Church and other OrientalChurches still drawn on the same
line that started in the days of the apostles.

Fifth:
Now we know that the early church still exists, but what kind of impact can
this church have on an individual’s spiritual life?

Although the Reformation movement would have
liked to restore the grace of God back to its dynamic position in the church,
it eliminated a great deal of the work of the grace when it refused the
priesthood, sacraments, and the spiritual treasures that passed down over the
centuries.Christ Himself established
these sacraments to work as channels of grace in the life of the faithful.Without them the individual suffers
spiritually and the church loses its way to the heavenly spiritual
treasures.Thanks be
to God that a church like the Coptic Orthodox Church still has it all.We can summarize what this church has in one
phrase: ‘the fullness of Christ.’

+ +
+

Now,
are you eager to see one great icon of the church that was established by
Christ and His apostles?It still
exists, and probably in your town.Check
your telephone book for the Coptic Orthodox Church or visit www.mycopticchurch.com to find the closest church to you.There you will experience the church as it
was in the days of St.
Paul, St.
Peter, and the other apostles.You will
enjoy the rich heavenly worship as you never experienced before.You will witness the church that was meant
when Christ established it.You will
find a church that is not basing her faith on one person who has no connection
to what was delivered from the saints, but the fullness of Christ that has been
passed down as it was 2000 years ago.What you will find there is different from what you are used to, and it
might take you a while until you understand it and open its spiritual treasure,
but it is worse every effort to understand.